Almost every day for the past six months, we've tried to devote at least 30 minutes to learning Greek. We usually do this while having a morning cup of tea, and that's been the routine here in Maine. We've tried using at least 6 different apps, youtube videos, print books, e-books, and just about any other method we can unearth. Unfortunately, as numerous Greeks have told us, it's a very difficult language to learn. They often say that many Greeks don't even speak or write it well. Greek uses gender like other European languages, but the Greeks take the complexity to another level. And obviously it's a different alphabet from Romance languages. Everyone thinks they know a handful of Greek letters but you've likely been mispronouncing many of them. Letters like beta and delta are actually pronounced VEH-ta and THEH-lta, respectively, and that's just the start. Tell that to the sorority and fraternity crowd! Greek also has a preponderance of overlapping vowels that all sound the same but are spelled in mind-blowing ways. You can't tell the difference when spoken--you must figure it out from the context. Like the sound AFTEE could mean: she, it, they (masculine, i.e., a group of guys), or ear! We trudge along, often befuddled, but we are very slowly learning more. We might be able to hold our own in a conversation with a two year old when we get back. The Greeks, obviously, can't use the classic phrase "It's all Greek to me" to express befuddlement, so they instead say something along the lines of "This strikes me as Chinese." That's one of the few languages that is certainly more difficult to learn than Greek!
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Studying Greek with an audio lesson
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